The Emergency Services community has a need to support multimedia and other forms of emergency services with the same general characteristics as emergency voice calls (such as, for example, 9-1-1 or 1-1-2) in a wireless network. However, Non-Voice Emergency Services (NOVES) are not currently fully supported.
NOVES may be an end-to-end session between a user and a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). For example, FIG. 1 shows a traffic model for establishment of a NOVES session including a human initiated device in communication with a PSAP. Examples of non-verbal communications for an emergency services network may include: (1) text messages from citizen to emergency services; (2) session based and/or session-less instant messaging type sessions with emergency services; (3) multi-media (for example, pictures and video clips) transfer to emergency services either during or after other communications with emergency services; (4) a real-time video session with emergency services; or (5) emergency communications to emergency services by individuals with special needs (for example, hearing impaired citizens).
Current proposals for NOVES only support initiation of NOVES from a manned user device to a PSAP. However, other scenarios are possible and additional procedures and infrastructure are needed.